This blog captures my musings and ramblings as I come across zillions of things in this beautiful world. While I scribble my feelings here, I would request readers to drop in a word or two about themselves or their likes/dislikes to make the most of this interactive space.
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Thursday, November 27, 2008

Why me? Have you ever wondered …why me? When things go wrong, rather when things don't go the way you want them to go, we invariably begin to ask this - why me? Why does God/ parents/ friends/office has to do this to me?

Of course it hurts when your loved ones put you in mess, when they behave the way you never imagine them to, when they mess your relationships with others. What does one do in this situation – cry loud or just keep mum and say BRING ON, I’m STRONG, I can take more of this crap.

No sermons and no moral fables. I caught on this sentiment from an old acquaintance. I met him late in 2003, during my stint with The Indian Express. We were a bubbly group of interns working with the Delhi edition. Two of us (Me and Suren Da) were from HPU wheile the other six of them were from IMC. Suren Da worked with Express for two weeks after which he followed his interests else where. I continued with Express for a while. During this stint, I got along with people from IIMC. We all got along well. Among them was this quiet, shy and introvert lad from the nort-east. Let’s call him ‘L’ for reference.

He belonged to this beautiful state and was living in the IIMC hostel. His poise, his calm and humble demeanor was prominent part of his personality. Aspiring journos are usually a very aggressive breed. They have fire in their belly and literally so, because they think that they can chage everything under the sun, or may be they will replace Barkha Dutt and Prannoy Roy one day. This wasn’t the case with L. And then this chap was physically challenged as well. His left hand was numb!!! It didn’t move at all. He was in an alien land where people understand Hindi, more specifically Punjabi and the great Jat language. I gathered from other people that he belonged to a simple family and may be his family even sold their belongings for his education. He was certainly bright. I mean you can’t get into IIMC for nothing.

All of us were sent on different assignments/press confrence everyday. By the end of the day, we had to come back and file the stories and chase senior editors to get them edited. That was quite a task, since ‘editing’ here means getting by-lines and Express has a strict policy of giving by-lines to worthy stories only. While we all chased stories, gathered by-lines and secretly looked for jobs outside; L was very calm. He went to cover stories everyday and even filed them in the CMS but never really bothered to hound the editors. His response was simple, “If my story is good then the editor will notice it himself and call me. Else, let it be.” He continued to attend press conferences, file stories with one hand and still kept quiet about his work. Having said that, I must mention that he got two or three by-lines and his stories were actually good. They were real meritorious stuff. While we loved the 20-30 by lines for any fashion show we attended, he was happy with those two-three bylines.

We were initially shocked about this attitude. I mean we all were slogging to make name for ourselves. We traveled in buses, haggled with autowallahs to travel from one place to another while covering stories. We got into unfamiliar zones, met new people just for the heck of tracking some stories that would materialize into by-lines. Initially we were irritated with L's attitude (for the fact that he was so uncaring) and later we let him be. Counseling didn’t help. L continued with this attitude. He left Express after his internship was over. He didn’t want to stay there for more experience/exposure. Later it seems he complete the course and went back to his native place. We all thought that was the end of L, his life and career and the sacrifices that his parents made to get him to Delhi.

And now the story goes that he is working for UN. The God damn United Nations!!!! He’s heading communications department for some North-East based programme. He is based there and needless to say that he’s doing very well for himself. :)Good for him and may his tribe of people continue to grow.

When ever you feel left and out do spare thoughts for so may L’s around. There are so many silent workers who slog as much as we do. It’s just that they don’t make hue and cry about it. And they still create a longing impression. What say?